How do I preload imports into Django's manage.py shell command?

Question

When I run manage.py shell on my Django project to take a peek at something there are common imports that I always want to run at the start of the shell (e.g. I always want to import my model files.) How can I have these run automatically everytime I run the shell command?

2nd related question, when I hit the up arrow I get the "^A" character instead of the previously run command in the manage.py shell (and in my regular python shell), how can I fix this so it loads the previous command like on the Linux/Unix command line?

Answer 1

Auto importing frequently used packages in python manage.py shell_plus

Example:

#  local_settings
SHELL_PLUS_PRE_IMPORTS = (
    ('<app_name>.models', '*'),
    ('<app_name>.forms', '*'),
    ('<app_name>.views', '*'),
    ('django.core.urlresolvers', '*'),
    ('django.db', 'connection'),
    ('django.db', 'reset_queries'),
)

SHELL_PLUS_DONT_LOAD = ['<app_name>', '<app_name>']

Reference:
https://github.com/django-extensions/django-extensions/blob/master/docs/shell_plus.rst